Mozilla's "Do Not Track" Feature Gains Popularity

Mozilla announces two developments that bring its Do Not Track privacy feature in Firefox closer to being respected by industry.

"To provide users more choice and control over online behavioral tracking, it’s essential that publishers and advertisers adopt and implement Web technologies that respect consumers’ wishes to not be tracked across their Web properties and services," writes Alex Fowler on the Mozilla Blog. Prompting Fowler's post are two new developments that are helping to move the Do Not Track (DNT) privacy feature to become and industry standard. Those developments include the AP News Registry service implementing the DNT header across 800 news sites that service 175-million unique visitors each month and the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) is initiating a process to explore incorporating the DNT header, as proposed by Mozilla, into its Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising (OBA).

Fowler states that with the integration of the DNT into Firefox, users can now check a Do Not Track box in the Advanced screen in Firefox Options (PC) or Preferences (Mac) and when DNT is enabled, a signal sent via an HTTP header tells websites and third parties that the user wants to opt-out of online behavioral tracking.

If you have browsed the tech news recently, you probably saw a pair of stories about an important open source browser the world knows as Firefox. If it matters to you, I will add that, despite the logo, a Firefox is really not supposed to be a fox at all but is actually a red panda. The news stories? The first was that Firefox just had its ninth birthday. The browser was born when the Mozilla Foundation (remnants of the once great Netscape Communications Corp.) realized its old Mozilla browser was getting too bloated and wanted a fresh start.